4 Things That Inspired The Spotlight

Inspiration comes from a kaleidoscope of different sources. Here are four things that helped to inspire my mystery-thriller The Spotlight.

(Note: Don’t worry, this post is spoiler-free for the events of The Spotlight.)

1. Being a lifelong music fan

I’ve always thought that the music industry provides a rich seam for fiction. If you love music, you really love music. It can turn your mood around. It soothes you when you’re devastated. It helps you to express emotions that would otherwise remain locked inside you.

In writing The Spotlight, I often returned to the period of my life when music meant the most to me. I was at university and hating it. I didn’t have many friends and I didn’t know how to make new friends.

But what I did have was a mix CD (wow, that’s a relic), which my buddy Meghan had made for me. It contained songs by the group that would instantly become my favourite band – Brand New.

Since then, the band Brand New have incinerated into an ash-cloud of sexual misconduct allegations, but looking back, I realise Brand New as people don’t matter very much. What leaves an indelible mark is how much the music meant to me at that point in my life. To quote a cliché, it was the friends I made along the way – the people I met who loved the same band as me, the lasting friendships I formed with fellow music fans.

The Spotlight is about the fever that exists around music fandom: the people you meet along the way; the feelings you unlock as a result of discovering a very favourite band.

2. The juggernaut success of Taylor Swift and the other leading ladies

I listen to a wide range of music, but looking back on the past ten years of pop, it’s hard to get excited about the men, talented though many of them are. I mean, Beyonce versus Ed Sheeran isn’t much of a fair fight, am I right?

In The Spotlight, I wrote about a fictional signer named Silver, who is Britain’s newest pop princess – and she encounters all the glitz, the glamour, and the casual terror that goes along with stardom.

In researching the novel, I mainlined many of the big popstar documentaries. I’ll save you some time and recommend the best two I watched: Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry and Pink: All I Know So Far.

Yes, the lives of popstars are dazzling, with packed-out stadiums, world travel, adoring crowds. (As Billie Eilish comments, her supporters aren’t just fans, they “a part of me.”) However, the insecurity is palpable among these women. It’s not just the people who hate them that cause them anguish; it’s also the people who love them so much it turns twisted.

3. The Faustian bargain of fame

It seems to me that becoming famous is a deal with the devil. With that in mind, why do so many people clamour for celebrity?

I think there is an aspect of addiction around it. Once you experience the high-highs of a crowd chanting your name, you’re doomed to spend every moment recapturing that feeling.

But what happens when your rocket ship of fame falls back down to earth?

The real-life case of Mark ‘Gator’ Rogowski springs to mind. Gator shot to fame as a teenager in the 1980s as a pro skateboarder, enjoying all the trappings of stardom. However, his career crashed when the fashions of skateboarding evolved in the 1990s. Fame, gone. Adoration, gone.

Gator’s story has a grisly end: following a relationship breakdown, he committed murder. He killed Jessica Bergsten, a female friend who reminded him of his ex-girlfriend, and buried her in the desert.

Not every fallen star turns to murder, but it goes to show the psychological damage that the whirlwind of celebrity can help to induce.

4. My own troubled relationship with “success”

I’ve never been famous – and I’ve never committed murder (as a crime writer, I feel the need to unequivocally state this at regular intervals) – but, like many people, I have a strange relationship with success.

People will compliment me – “wow, you’ve got another book out!” – and I have a bad habit of dismissing their praise. Well, I’m not a bestseller. Well, I’ve only had three novels published. Well, there’s still the next book to write.

Why is that, as soon as we achieve a goal, we immediately move the goal posts and act like what we achieved wasn’t good enough?

In writing The Spotlight, this was a conundrum that I pondered extensively. Our heroine, Kirby, is a has-been on the music scene, an also-ran in the fame game, but she’s carved out a good life for herself in spite of never reaching the top. Perhaps, I wondered while writing the novel, she could just stop. Stop striving. Stop shooting for the stars, and instead enjoy what she’s already achieved.

Maybe, in your life, you’ll do the emotionally-healthy thing and stop to appreciate your successes. As for Kirby, she’s determined to keep chasing the dream of stardom, at all costs.

Find out if Kirby’s dream turns out to be a Faustian bargain by picking up a copy of The Spotlight.